Welcome to Ham Radio's Daily Satirical Newsletter

WEEKEND EDITION: 3928 for swap net at 3 today based out of NH....Good night Red Sox....Robots might be serving you in the future....artificial muscles for us old guys....

Foundations of Amateur Radio

How to run an SSB contest without using your voice ...

As you might know, I consider myself a contester. I derive great pleasure from getting on air and making noise during a contest. It gives me a wonderful opportunity to test my station, hone my skills and work on learning something new every time I participate.

Due to circumstances I've been away from contesting for a number of years, but recently I was able scratch my itch from my own shack. For 24 glorious hours I was able to make contacts from the comfort of my home, being able to make a cup of tea, eat some dinner, stay warm, catch a nap when the bands were closed and generally have a blast.

My set-up worked well. Operating QRP or low power, I used a basic contest logger, since I wasn't expecting to be making many contacts. To automatically call CQ, I recorded my voice and set-up a script that played the audio, waited four seconds, then played it again. Using my audio mixer, I could turn that on and off at will and between that and the headset I was wearing I had loads of fun and even made contacts!

During the last three hours of the contest my partner came home. After hearing me attempt to confirm an exchange for a while, it became apparent that making exchanges, calling CQ and generally talking out loud was going to be an issue in our home, since my shack is within hearing range of the entire house. That or I'm going deaf and my voice is getting louder. I do get excited from time to time!

For the past several months I've been trying to find a solution and until today I wasn't getting any closer.

I didn't think I was asking for too much.

I'm looking for a contest logger, that runs on Linux, that has the super check partial database, knows the contest rules and most importantly, has a voice keyer with the ability to actually voice the exchange itself, as-in, not a pre-recorded audio file, but the ability to speak any callsign and any exchange.

As an aside, the super check partial database is a list of frequently heard contest callsigns, originally introduced by Ken K1EA, which if used properly, helps you when you're deciphering a callsign on a noisy band. Using it to guess calls and make mistakes can result in significant penalties for some contests.

The only tool I've come across that does all this in any way is N1MM. It runs on Windows and I have to tell you, the idea of having to buy a new computer, just to run a supported version of Windows just doesn't do it for me. N1MM also doesn't use Hamlib, so my radio needs to be physically connected to the computer. I won't bore you with my weeks of attempts, but it became farcical.

During my months of exploration I looked at and tried plenty of other tools. Many of them aren't intended for contesting, don't have access to the super check partial database, don't do voice-keying, don't run under Linux, require weird bits of extra software, have little or no documentation and a myriad of other issues like having to compile from source with arcane library requirements, the list goes on.

One contender that got close was a text only tool called TLF. It got so close that I almost used it for my previous contest. In the end I didn't because it was doing unpredictable things with the display and I had to write my own contest rule file for an unsupported contest which I couldn't test in time to actually use.

Today I took another look.

TLF doesn't have a voice-keyer on board, but it does have the ability to interface with a Morse-keyer, which is interesting, since it implies that there is a process that translates callsigns and messages typed in with a keyboard into Morse, which might mean that it may be possible to pretend to be a Morse-key and make voice sounds instead.

The Morse-keyer software in question is cwdaemon. It accepts text messages from TLF and then converts those into Morse code and then directly controls your radio to generate dits and dahs on-air.

I started digging through the source code when I realised that cwdaemon might have a debug mode that shows what it's doing. Turns out, not only does it have a debug option, you can also prevent it from keying your radio. Which means that I should be able to get TLF to generate the messages, cwdaemon to show those messages and me to do something useful, like play audio files as appropriate.

If I pull this off, it will mean that I can operate my station as if I'm running CW, but the radio will be transmitting voice, which makes for a beautiful way to save my vocal chords whilst running a contest without bothering anyone else and do this without needing to install Windows, which frankly, in my book is a win.

If I succeed, and I think the odds are good, I'll publish my efforts on my github repository for you to use, if you're so inclined.

I have to confess, when I started this adventure, I was not at all convinced that I could make this happen and I'd all but thrown in the towel. It still quite unbelievable to me that this kind of thing doesn't appear to exist, but if all goes well, it should soon.

What are you going to be doing for your next contest?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Failed Russian satellite crashes back to Earth over the US and Canada

The spacecraft didn't make it to orbit and went out in a blaze of glory instead

A fireball that blazed a slow trail across the skies above Michigan and other nearby states and provinces Tuesday night wasn't a meteor but instead a spacecraft making an unexpected homecoming.

Dozens of photos, videos and eyewitness reports came pouring into the American Meteor Society from the Great Lakes region and as far south as Tennessee.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, a leading observer of satellites and other orbital spacecraft, was quick to note on Twitter that the sightings corresponded very closely to "the exact predicted time Kosmos-2551 passed over the region."

Kosmos-2551 was a Russian reconnaissance satellite that launched on Sept. 9 but didn't make it into orbit.

Videos captured from across the region show a fireball working its way across the evening sky for nearly a minute. This is one hint that the fiery object likely was not natural, as meteors are typically much smaller and can move faster, allowing them to burn up quick. A bulky satellite, on the other hand, can take longer to disintegrate and meets more resistance as it reenters the atmosphere, leading to a more prolonged burn.

Although the images appear to show the artificial satellite edging ever closer to the ground as it makes a run for the horizon, McDowell clarified that it was actually being observed at an altitude of about 40 miles (64 kilometers).

The fireball isn't the only one to be seen this week. The Orionids reached a peak Thursday morning, and fireballs from that meteor shower may continue to light up the skies through the weekend.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/failed-russian-satellite-crashes-back-to-earth-over-the-us-and-canada/

Amateur Radio Newsline Report

**
HAMS RESPOND TO FLOODING IN INDIA

NEIL/ANCHOR: As Newsline went to production, the southern Indian state of Kerala was besieged with flooding and landslides, the result of heavy monsoon rain that began on Friday, October 16th. Authorities were still counting the dead and the missing as the National Disaster Response Force sent its teams out across the state's central and southern regions. The National Institute of Amateur Radio reported that hams were deployed to assist with communications at such sites as the fire and rescue station in the city of North Paravoor. Newsline will continue to follow this story as it develops.

(CNN, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AMATEUR RADIO)

**
COMPETITION SET FOR MILITARY RADIO OPERATORS

NEIL/ANCHOR: For 36 hours between the 26th and 28th of October, international teams of radio operators will push the limits of their abilities and their radio equipment to compete in an event that military organizers in Canada are calling the world's "most prestigious military-led High Frequency Radio competition." Graham Kemp VK4BB has the details.

GRAHAM: The exercise, known as Noble Skywave, is a friendly contest among military radio operators and their affiliates to contact other teams, making use of voice and data modes. Teams can comprise radio operators active in various nations' military forces or they can be in the Reserves or National Guard. Operators also participate from the US Military Auxiliary Radio System and the Canadian Forces Affiliate Radio System.

This year, more than 150 teams in 10 nations are expected to be on the air hoping to be crowned the best of the best. Although the majority of participants are in the US and Canada, past exercises have also drawn participation from teams in Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Peru.

The Communications and Electronics Branch of the Canadian Armed Forces has been at the helm of this training exercise since 2013.
Lt. Taylor Curran of the Canadian Armed Forces' 21st Electronic Warfare Regiment told Newsline in an emailed statement that his regiment is the Lead Mounting Unit for the event.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Graham Kemp VK4BB.

(LT. TAYLOR CURRAN)

**
DIGITAL SAFETY NET READY TO EXPAND IN PACIFIC NW

NEIL/ANCHOR: With the help of some key funding, a digital safety net is ready to expand in the Pacific NorthWest. Andy Morrison K9AWM brings us that report.

ANDY: An emergency communications network in Oregon is getting the resources to expand its reach with the help of an $88,000 grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications. Oregon HamWAN—for Wide Area Network—will use the funds to set up a dozen distribution sites between Salem and Portland, Oregon, enabling a connection to the Puget Sound Data Ring. That data ring provides communications between Seattle and Vancouver in Washington State.

The project leader of the Oregon digital network, Herb Weiner, called the connection a [quote] "game-changer for emergency communications in the Portland area." [endquote] The establishment of 12 backbone distribution sites will allow hams to set up network nodes more quickly in the event of a disaster such as an earthquake. Each network node would operate with such equipment as a 12-volt battery and a low-cost Wi-Fi router.

The chairman of the private foundation's grants advisory committee, John Hays, K7VE, praised the project for its ability to provide [quote] "a strong backbone in Oregon and help preserve our microwave bands." [endquote] The multi-megabit data network provides regional connectivity via amateur radio on the microwave bands, providing high-speed digital communications.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Andy Morrison K9AWM.

(ARDC, Oregon Ham-WAN)

**
MEMBERSHIP MILESTONE FOR SKCC

NEIL/ANCHOR: The Straight Key Century Club is celebrating a membership milestone. Randy Sly W4XJ tells us how it happened.

RANDY: On October 14th, the Straight Key Century Club enrolled its 25,000th member, the Florida Island Hoppers Amateur Radio Club, W4USI. Club Trustee, Bill Clark, W3SI, who has been an individual member for over a year, told Amateur Radio Newsline that he is excited to have his club join “by far the friendliest, most active group I have ever been with.” Now, as they activate US Islands, the club can also issue their membership number.

The SKCC was founded in 2006 to promote and preserve the art of manual sending with straight keys, bugs and sideswipers. Membership quickly spread from North America to Europe, Oceania, and Asia. Members can earn various awards as well as participate in sprints and other contests, The club welcomes new and returning CW operators with an overriding philosophy of always being considerate regarding the other operator’s speed and skill.

Membership in SKCC is free and open to operators of all skill levels. They provide a good place to get your CW feet wet, as well as a fun place to hone your skills on mechanical keys. For more information and to join, please visit their website at www.skccgroup.com

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I’m Randy Sly, W4XJ


**
HAMSCI SEEKS VOLUNTEERS FOR ECLIPSE FESTIVAL

NEIL/ANCHOR: What are you doing the first week or so in December? You're invited to be part of the Antarctic Eclipse Festival. Geri Goodrich KF5KRN explains what's involved.

GERI: The Antarctic in December? It's a promising time and a promising location for citizen scientists volunteering to help yet another project of HamSCI. No, it doesn't involve travel—just an HF radio and some commitment to the cause: With a total solar eclipse happening over Antarctica on December 4th, HamSCI is hoping that hams and shortwave listeners around the world will help measure Doppler shift at that time by using their HF receivers at home. The shifts are the result of space weather having an impact on the ionosphere and on propagation paths.

The worldwide project, which is being called the Antarctic Eclipse Festival, will be looking for measurements gathered between the 1st and 10th of December.

Instructions on how to sign up for the festival, how to collect the data and how to submit it can be found on the HamSCI website at hamsci dot org.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Geri Goodrich KF5KRN.

(HAMSCI)


**
NEW RADIO RULES FOR YACHT RACE

NEIL/ANCHOR: There are some new radio rules for a prestigious global yacht race. Here's Jeremy Boot G4NJH with that update.

JEREMY: A past controversy over alleged illegal use of amateur radio has sunk plans to have such a rig on board any yachts competing during the prestigious Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 2022. According to an article in Yachting Monthly magazine, the only permissible radio will be a waterproof shortwave receiver. There may also be a fax capable of receiving charts of weather systems.

The 2018 race was beset with reports of illegal radio operations and, in one high-profile controversy, one sailor was sanctioned for allegely breaking rules that banned outside assistance. He was accused of asking a ham radio operator for weather routing details. Race chairman Don McIntyre said at the time that skippers were only permitted to use information that is available publicly and that weather routing was strictly banned.

The yachts are to set sail in September of 2022 for a race that the Yachts and Yachting website calls [quote] "a gruelling demanding and daring marathon." [endquote]

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

(YACHTING MONTHLY)

**
WIRELESS TRANSFER TECH GETS FCC APPROVAL

NEIL/ANCHOR: So who needs wires anyway? The US Federal Communications Commission has given its approval to wireless charging technology from a San Jose, California company. Energous Corporation sought approval for its 900 MHz, 1-watt active energy harvesting transmitter that enables wireless transfer of power. The US regulatory agency's OK follows similar approval granted in Europe this past May. The transmitter, known as WattUp, is able to charge several devices at the same time and is seen as key to the growth of devices reliant on the Internet of Things. The company heralded the move on its website, praising WattUp as [quote] "the world's first and only regulatory-approved wireless charging technology that supports near and far field wireless power transfer."

(BUSINESS WIRE, ENERGOUS)

**
BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world, including the K6PVR repeater in Ventura, California on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. local time.

**
HAMMARLUND RADIOS TAKE SPOTLIGHT IN NOVEMBER EVENT

NEIL/ANCHOR: You don't have to have a Hammarlund radio to participate in the 2021 Hammarlund Radio Hullabaloo special event in November but it sure can't hurt. Skeeter Nash N5ASH gives us the details.

SKEETER: This year's Hammerlund radio special event is a busy one for members of the High Appalachian Mountain Amateur Radio Club. Special event station W4H is marking two occasions this year: the 160th anniversary of the birth in Sweden of Oscar Hammarlund, founder of Hammarlund Manufacturing—and the 70th anniversary of the radio factory he opened in Mars Hill, North Carolina, to produce Hammarlund radios. Hammarlund founded his company in New York City in 1910 and while it was operating there, it created the first commercial short-wave superheterodyne receiver. North Carolina, however, was home to Hammarlund's last manufacturing plant, which closed in 1973.

Even if your radio is a newer model, you can still contact operators between the 17th of November at 1100 UTC and 19th of November at 0100 UTC—but don't be surprised if the radio transmitting back at you is one of the older classic Hammarlunds. Operators will be calling QRZ using CW, SSB, AM and FM as well as FT-8. Hams in the area can also make contact via the Mount Mitchell repeater on 145.190 MHz.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Skeeter Nash N5ASH.

(RALPH ROGNSTAD, W4RRJ, HAMMARLUND HISTORY WEBSITE)

**
NATIONAL RADIO CENTRE SEEKS VOLUNTEERS

NEIL/ANCHOR: If you know how to handle busy traffic on the air, perhaps you'd like to think about handling some equally busy traffic at an amateur radio attraction in the UK. Jeremy Boot G4NJH explains.

JEREMY: There are thousands of visitors to the National Radio Centre of the Radio Society of Great Britain each month—so many that the Society is working to expand its volunteer team, especially for weekend shifts. The National Radio Centre (NRC) is located at Bletchley Park, a Victorian mansion near Milton Keynes, 75 kilometres or 50 miles northwest of London. It was the centre for second world war intelligence message code-breaking.

NRC volunteers will receive training and have access to the GB3RS radio station on the premises. They're being asked to be available to work at least two days a month, especially at weekends.

If you are interested or have questions, please contact Martyn Baker, G0GMB at nrc dot support at rsgb dot org dot uk (nrc.support@rsgb.org.uk)

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

**
ONLINE 'BOOT CAMP' COVERS RADIO BASICS AND MORE

NEIL/ANCHOR: If you're licensed and still confused, welcome to the club. Or better still, welcome to a boot camp that's being held just for hams and would-be hams who have more questions than answers. Sel Embee KB3TZD tells us how to participate.

SEL: Members of the Nashua Area Radio Society believe it's important to take the mystery out of amateur radio for licensees, whether they're new Technicians or veterans with an General or Extra class license. The camp is being held on Saturday, November 13th, offering tutorials and demonstrations on everything from putting together an HF station and operating SSB to fox hunting, CW operation, programming a radio, joining a repeater net, and even the basics of Echolink. Sessions will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The radio society website notes that the bootcamp is for anyone in North America, not just amateurs in the New England states. Attendance is even open to prospective amateurs who want to learn more about what awaits them once they do get licensed.

To register, or for more information, follow the link in this week's Newsline script at arnewsline.org.

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Sel Embee, KB3TZD.

[FOR PRINT ONLY, DO NOT READ: https://www.n1fd.org/ham-bootcamp/ ]

(NASHUA AREA RADIO SOCIETY)

**
WORLD OF DX

In the world of DX, Miguel, EA1BP, will operate from Martinique from the 27th of October to the 5th of November as FM/EA1BP. He’ll be on the air holiday style using CW and SSB only, on various bands. Listen for him as well during the CQ WW DX SSB contest on the 30th and 31st of October, when he will be using the callsign TO7O (T OH SEVEN OH). Send QSLs to his home call direct, by the Bureau, ClubLog or LoTW.

In the months ahead, be listening for the special callsign DL35EUDX between November of 2021 and October of 2022. Radio operators will be using it to mark the 35th anniversary of the European DX Foundation. Be listening as well for other special event stations with callsigns ending in 35EUDXF. An award will be available for contacts.

December will be a big month for Gavin, GM0GAV, who is activating the callsign GB60ANT all month from Scotland to mark the 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty Signature. Send QSLs to GM0LVI.

Listen for TJ, PE1OJR, operating holiday-style from Bonaire as PJ4/PE1OJR through October 29th. He will be on SSB and FT8/FT4 on 40 and 20 meters. QSL using LoTW or ClubLog.

(OHIO PENN DX)

**
KICKER: GOOD SIGNAL REPORT FOR NEW HAM MAGAZINE

NEIL/ANCHOR: If hams love something more than anything else, it's communicating. That means when they're not on the radio, they're talking about radio or reading about it. John Williams VK4JJW tells us about a magazine recently launched by amateur radio operators in India that's being published electronically to a worldwide readership.

JOHN: Amateurs from the Satara Institute of Hams and the Ocean Cadet Academy Ham Club have just added to the library of amateur radio publications with the launch of The Five Nine Amateur Radio Magazine. Editor Gauri Gopi Shetty, VU3WTE, and associate editor Komal Bhosale, VU3LWE, present articles every quarter showcasing projects, contests and club activities, paying tribute as well to Silent Keys. According to the Satara Institute's Rohit Bhosale, VU2MIB / W2MIB, the digital magazine, which is available as a free, downloadable PDF, already has more than 15,000 readers globally. The October issue has just been published. The inaugural issue, released in June, featured radio pioneer Jagadish Chandra Bose on the cover and a message from club president Deepak Visvanathan VU3IKO. He said the editorial team takes particular pride in launching the magazine on the occasion of the centenary year of amateur radio in India. The publication's name - represented by the numerals "5" and "9" represent the report given for a perfect signal for QSOs by phone.

FRIDAY EDITION: Red Sox tonight, do or die.....

ANNOUNCEMENT: I will resume the Bull Net Traders Net Saturday at 3:00 PM on 3.928.
Hope you can join us . All are welcome. Joe K1JEK
K1TP: I will be offering two Yaesu FT-847's in great shape,  Yaesu FT-817,  Icom 746PRO, and two Astron power supplies 35-50 amp. Best offers considered!

WSJT-X version 2.5.1 released

The development team have announced the General Availability (GA) release of WSJT-X version 2.5.1.  

This release mainly contains improvements and defect repairs related to Q65 and JT65 modes when used with non-standard and compound calls.  Also included is a new feature for microwave aircraft scatter, and repairs for defects detected since the 2.5.0 GA release.

A full list of changes can be found in the Release Notes:
https://physics.princeton.edu//pulsar/k1jt/Release_Notes.txt

IMPORTANT: If you expect to use the JT65 or Q65 modes to make weak-signal QSOs that involve a nonstandard callsign, be sure to upgrade to WSJT-X 2.5.1!

DX News from the ARRL

October 22, 2021

This week's bulletin was made possible with information provided by W2GD, The Daily DX, the OPDX Bulletin, 425 DX News, DXNL, Contest Corral from QST and the ARRL Contest Calendar and WA7BNM web sites. Thanks to all.

KINGDOM OF SWATINI, 3DA0. A group of operators are QRV as 3DA0WW until October 26. Activity is on 160 to 10 meters using CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8 in DXpedition mode. QSL direct to YL2GN.

THE GAMBIA, C5. Operators Jan-Francois, F4AHV, Gerard, F5NVF, Luc, F5RAV and Abdel, M0NPT will be QRV as C5C from Kololi from October 24 to November 19. Activity will be on 80 to 10 meters using CW, SSB, FT8, FT4, and Satellite activity on QO-100. QSL via F5RAV.

BAHAMAS, C6. Richard, NN2T will be QRV as C6AHB from Bimini Island, IOTA NA-048, from October 27 to November 3. This includes being active in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. QSL to home call.

FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, DA. Members of the DARC local association Wolfsburg and possibly others will be QRV as special event station DR0OEBIS until the end of 2021 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the railway station Oebisfelde. Activity will be on various HF bands and Satellites using CW, SSB, RTTY and various digital modes. QSL via bureau.

MARTINIQUE, FM. Miguel, EA1BP will be QRV as FM/EA1BP from October 27 to November 5. This includes being active as TO7O in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. QSL to home call.

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, HC8. Members of the Tifariti Gang/DX Friends will be QRV as HD8R from October 26 to November 7. Activity will be with four active stations on 160 to 6 meters, including 60 meters, using CW, SSB, various digital modes, and on Low-Earth orbit Satellites. This includes being an entry in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest as either a Multi/2 or Multi/Multi entry. QSL via EA5RM.

SARDINIA, IS0. Richard, OM2TW is QRV as IS0/OM2TW until November 1. Activity is holiday style on the HF bands using CW, SSB, and various digital modes. This includes being an entry in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. QSL via OM2FY.

JAPAN, JA. Members of the radio club in the city of Tama are QRV as 8N1TAMA until the end of June 2022 to mark their city's 50th anniversary. Activity is on 160 meters to 70 centimeters using CW, SSB and FM. QSL via bureau.

ARGENTINA, LU. Special event station L21RCA is QRV until the end of 2021 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Radio Club Argentina. QSL via LU4AA.

BELGIUM, ON. Special event stations ON75AF, ON75BAF and ON75BFS are QRV until the end of 2021 to draw attention to the 75th anniversary of the Belgian Air Force. QSL via operators' instructions.

BONAIRE, PJ4. Tjeerd, PE1OJR is QRV as PJ4/PE1OJR until October 29. Activity is holiday style mainly on 40 and 20 meters using SSB, FT8 and FT4. QSL via LoTW.

SABA, ST. EUSTATIUS, PJ5. John, W5JON will be QRV as PJ5/W5JON from St. Eustatius, IOTA NA-145, from October 24 to November 1. Activity will be on 40 to 6 meters using SSB and FT8. This includes being an entry in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. QSL direct to home call.

ARUBA, P4. John, W2GD will be QRV as P40W from October 25 to November 1. Activity will be on all bands as time permits. This includes being active in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB contest. QSL via LoTW.

TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS, VP5. Mario, W4HBW is QRV as VP5MA from Providenciales Island, IOTA NA-002, until October 31. He is usually active on 20 and 15 meters using FT8. QSL direct to home call.

BERMUDA, VP9. Jeff, N6CQ will be QRV as VP9/N6GQ from October 27 to November 1. Activity will be on 160 to 6 meters using CW and SSB. He plans to be active as VP9I in the upcoming CQ World Wide DX SSB
contest. QSL via operator's instructions.

THIS WEEKEND ON THE RADIO
The ARRL EME Contest, Stew Perry Topband CW Challenge, North American SSB Sprint Contest, NCCC CW Sprint, K1USN Slow Speed CW Test, YBDXPI FT8 Contest, UK/EI DX SSB Contest and the Classic CW Exchange are all on tap for this upcoming weekend.

The Telephone Pioneers QSO Party and K1USN Slow Speed Test are scheduled for October 25.

The Worldwide Sideband Activity Contest and RTTYOPS Weeksprint are scheduled for October 26.

The SKCC CW Sprint, Phone Fray, CWops Mini-CWT Test and UKEICC 80-Meter CW Contest are on tap for October 27.

THURSDAY EDITION: Looks like a beautiful day, if you are in New England now is the time to check your antennas and put up any new ones, winter will soon be here...Tony's ten meter resport....What will be around in 1 million years on earth...

Technician License Training Course Added to ARRL's YouTube Channel

November QST Article Celebrates Centenary of the Beverage Antenna

Ham radios to the rescue in rain-hit Kerala

The district administration here has sought the service of Ham radio operators to coordinate disaster relief operations in case the communication system gets cut off due to any rain-related incident.

Even as the incessant rains and resultant flooding disrupted lives across central Kerala, ham radio enthusiasts have quietly swung into action in Thrissur district, setting up their unique work stations to ensure a steady stream of communication in case nature's fury wreaked havoc on conventional systems of contact.

The district administration here has sought the service of Ham radio operators to coordinate disaster relief operations in case the communication system gets cut off due to any rain-related incident.

"Communication turns out to be a major challenge when natural calamities strike. During heavy floods, there are chances that the power supply will be down for days, which will affect the communication systems including the mobile phones," Sarachandran C S, a former merchant navy officer-turned-ham radio operator told PTI.

He is one of the ten operators hired by the Thrissur administration to handle emergency communication in case of any untoward incidents.

All the operators have the Amateur Station Individual Operator licence issued by the Union government.

All the Taluks offices in Thrissur district are currently equipped with radio facilities so that even when all other communication systems are down, emergency services can be contacted and details can be shared.

The services of ham radio operators were utilised during the 2018 August deluge when the whole state was ravaged.

"As the state was flooded, power connection was lost in most parts. This affected mobile communication in many places. Our service was sought by the district administration. Over 40 ham radio operators worked and helped at least 2,000 people during the floods that year," Sarachandran said.

Ham radio and its operations are considered as the "King of all hobbies" and amateur radio, as it is otherwise known, is internationally accepted as a means of emergency communication

WEDNESDAY EDITION: You know your listening to a southern redneck group on 3927 evenings when the cast of characters include babbling Bruce, cabbage, dumbass Donnie, WAM, and skidmark. Entertainment....

TUESDAY EDITION: More ham accessories for sale below, no I will not ship, they must be picked up. Most of the old receivers and power supplies are too heavy. I am just helping them sell this gear from their silent key dad.....

Two Astron power supplies, one a 50+ amp an d the other 25 amps, MFJ tuners (one vhf), old keys, Leader oscilloscope..lol pickup in Gloucester, MA

AmateurLogic.TV celebrates 16 years

AmateurLogic.TV, the world's first and longest running Amateur radio related video podcast, celebrated 16 years on the air Friday, October 15th.

Peter, VK3PB drops in for and update from downunder. George shows some of his favorite tips and projects from the last few years. Tommy demonstrates a neat battery capacity tester. Emile discovers new Cheap Tricks with Echolink.

Announcing the winner of our 16th Anniversary contest!
Cliff Boand, WA0JTW will receive an Icom IC-705 Transceiver, AH-705 Auto Tuner, LC-192 Backpack, MFJ-4230MV Power Supply, MFJ-2012 OCF Antenna, and RG-8X coax.

MONDAY EDITION: 50 degrees here in the island, a beautiful sunny day. ..I have a chipper I have not used for years, we used it to clear lots for site work. this morning I am going to haul it over here and see if I can get it going. My neighbor is taking down 5 trees and I thought I would help him out.....I also need to get my butt over my son's house and get the boat winterized.....BARNET, Vt. (WCAX) - A 200-mile train trek from White River Junction to Newport, but it’s not your average railroad ride. Dozens of revitalized motorcars took to the tracks Saturday and will continue their journey Sunday.....94% of the galaxies are beyond reach,  how small do you feel now?..

Hams are going to be hams....Nearfest October 2021

Oregon student satellite expected to launch early next year

Portland State University say they expect Oregon's first satellite to be launched early in the new year

The PSU article says:

After months and months of research, testing and development, the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is preparing to hand off Oregon’s first satellite destined for the stars.

Later this month, the interdisciplinary student group will deliver the satellite known as OreSat0 to Seattle’s Spaceflight Inc. who will integrate OreSat0 into its Sherpa(R) Orbital Transfer Vehicle. The propulsive vehicle will carry and deploy many small satellites to orbit after hitching a ride to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2022.

OreSat0 is the first in a series of three satellites designed by the Portland State Aerospace Society and is just about the size of a tissue box. The satellite includes solar panels, batteries, a color camera and an amateur radio system.

Read the article at
https://www.pdx.edu/news/psu-students-prep-oregons-first-satellite-space-flight

President's speech to Shaping the Future of Amateur Radio workshop

The video of the address to IARU Region 1 Workshop - Shaping the Future of Amateur Radio - given by President Don Beattie G3BJ is now available

Almost 140 delegates are taking part in the workshop which runs from October 15-24, in several break-out sessions where they will work as teams on defining visions and ambitions for amateur radio, strategic objectives, with as end goal, actions, milestones and deliverables.

In his opening speech Don G3BJ notes:

"We are facing unprecedented challenges today. The world around us is changing fast, and many of these changes directly affect amateur radio and our community. By working together in this workshop event, we can help shape our future and invest in areas which will ensure that amateur radio remains an attractive and appealing activity for future generations."

Watch the video at
https://vimeo.com/628334110/03dcb27caf

WEEKEND EDITION: I need some pictures from Nearfest to show whats happening! I have been informed by the leader of the fest that it has been a record breaking attendance....

HRO REPRESENTED AT NEARFEST....

formal military..

hard hat and sandals, very stylish

For Sale, contact K1TP

Foundations of Amateur Radio

The inherent redundancy of a compromise antenna

For an activity that's seeped in the art of communication, amateur radio is a diverse collection of people, joined by a common interest and kept together using imperfect language describing an intrinsically complex science in the hope that we can learn from each other to get on air and make noise.

In this cooperative endeavour, language is important.

Let me start with a limerick by Arthur Frackenpohl:

There was a young fellow of Perth Who was born on the day of his birth He married, they say On his wife's wedding day And died when he quitted the earth

Stay with me.

In this day and age, first and foremost, let me give you a short summary, cobbled together from bits and pieces of a new invention, conceived whilst watching the evening sunset in close proximity to the beach.

What this cornucopia of tautologies has to do with our hobby might not be obvious, but let me illustrate.

Consider the phrase: "a compromise antenna", as-in, "Oh, I'd never use that antenna, it's a compromise antenna."

If you've been in this community for any time at all, you'll have heard that phrase and unless someone pointed it out, you might not have realised that it's essentially unhelpful.

Why?

Because as I've said many times before, all antennas are a compromise, by definition. This is true at several levels.

At a fundamental level, an isotropic antenna is a theoretical antenna that radiates equally in all directions - horizontally and vertically with the same intensity. It's infinitely small and operates on all frequencies with infinite bandwidth. It should be obvious, but this antenna cannot physically exist, so every built antenna represents a collection of trade-offs or compromises and no antenna can radiate more total power than an isotropic antenna.

Beyond that, within the physical constraints of antenna building there are many more compromises. Now this might not be immediately obvious, so let me elaborate.

Consider a 28 MHz, seven element Yagi antenna. With a 12m boom, a 5.3m reflector element, a turning circle of 7.5m and weighing in at 53 kilo. At 20m above the ground it has a gain of 17.5 dBi and handles 1.5 kW. It's physically capable of withstanding 180 km/h winds. It's a lovely piece of kit and if you have the space, it's absolutely something you might want to receive for your birthday and bolt to a mast somewhere near your radio.

If all antennas are a compromise, you might ask yourself, how is this beautiful 10m Yagi a compromise?

For starters, its total radiated power is less than an isotropic antenna. It works between 28 and 29 MHz, but nowhere else. It radiates signals really well in one direction, but not in any other. It requires lots of open space and as a fixed installation, it must be on a heavy duty rotator clamped to a tall mast. To actually acquire and install requires more funds than I've spent on all my radios to date.

Some of what I've mentioned might be acceptable to you, some not. For example, if you're always portable, this antenna makes no sense. You make choices to select an antenna that's best suited to the job and in doing so, you are introducing compromises.

Additionally, there are amateurs who would have you believe that a compromise antenna is one with high loss.

High loss in comparison to what?

If you live in an apartment block, there's no way that you can fit that 10m Yagi inside your bedroom, so you compromise and use a magnetic loop antenna instead. If you're on the top of a mountain, there's no opportunity to erect a structure, so you use a self-supporting vertical. If you're in a car, you cannot erect a horizontal dipole and drive down the highway, so you bolt a whip to your jalopy.

All of the choices you make to fit a purpose, an environment, a budget and available material will combine into an antenna that hopefully gets you on air making noise.

When someone tells you that an antenna is a compromise antenna, what they're really saying is that you made compromises that they're unwilling to make. That's easy to say if you have infinite space, money, experience and opportunity. In other words, they're just blowing hot air.

The whole point of antenna building is to find a particular set of compromises that suits your situation at the time that you're doing it. The intent of this hobby is to learn what the impact of a particular choice is and how it affects the operation of an antenna in a specific situation.

Next time you hear the redundant phrase "that's a compromise antenna", ask what compromises they are describing that they don't accept and decide for yourself if they are compatible with what you're attempting to achieve within the resources available to you.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Activity Days of Radio Amateurs celebrating 180 years of Potemkin Stairs

Radioclub 'Odessa' – Ukraine 2021.

Date of activity days: 18 … 24 October 2021year;

To obtain a diploma, you must:
- 10 QSO with Odessa Radio Amateurs on HF;

- QSO with the same station is qualified for the award on different bands or modes during from 18 to 24 October 2021y.

- Odessa Radio Amateurs can get award for 50 QSO on HF in Activity Days (18 … 24 October 2021).

To get the award the applicant should send an extract from the log confirming QSO to ut7fa@ukr.net (an award Manager, Pavlo Chekerys, UT7FA) in any text file format and advise his/her e-mail address for sending the award.

The call signs of Odessa Radio Amateur stations have 'F' in the first letter of the suffix plus the stations standard Call signs of Odessa stations: UX5HY, UY5HC, UT5RP, UT5RO, UT5RW.

Amateur Radio Newsline Report

**
NEW CALIFORNIA HAM STATION HAS EDUCATIONAL MISSION

PAUL/ANCHOR: Our top story this week is about a new amateur radio station on the West Coast of the US that is designed to be used by hams—but also nonhams. Its goal is to expand appreciation for what goes on on-the-air as well as terrestrially. Ralph Squillace KK6ITB has the details.

RALPH: A $35,550 grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications is helping fund the creation of an amateur radio station at the new Chrisman California Islands Center in Carpinteria, California. Amateur radio station K6TZ will function as an educational outreach facility and become part of the center's exhibit gallery. The Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club and the Santa Barbara Wireless Foundation will make the station available to the public when it is not on the air so that visitors to the nonprofit center can access in in the gallery. They can view an interactive presentation about amateur radio and other forms of wireless technologies, especially as those technologies relate to researchers and travelers on the islands off that part of the coast. Webcams will be connected via the club's microwave data network, giving gallery visitors a look at the islands themselves.

Club trustee Levi Maaia, K6LCM, said in a press release that the station will be open next year. The club website describes the station as [quote] "a fully-functional HF-VHF-UHF and microwave amateur radio station." [endquote]

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Ralph Squillace KK6ITB.


(DAN ROMANCHIK KB6NU)

**
GIFT PUTS STUDENT CLUB ON AIR IN INDIA

PAUL/ANCHOR: Meanwhile in India, another new amateur radio station is being put together for a newly formed student club. This club has also benefitted from a generous benefactor. Graham Kemp VK4BB picks up that story for us.

GRAHAM: For more than three dozen students at a government school in India's Nalgonda District, lessons are about to become more than just academic. Forty-three newly licensed radio amateurs are creating their club on campus and have just received equipment for their shack from the nearby Lamakaan Amateur Radio Club in Hyderabad (Hydra-Bod). The Dindi Amateur Radio Club's faculty supporter is Sayed Jilani VU3OND, the teacher who encouraged and coached the students to take the exam for their restricted grade amateur radio licenses.

The shack's new equipment, however, is a gift from the Lamakaan Club, whose vice president is Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE. Ashhar is a well-known experimenter and accomplished homebrewer whose designs for the microBITX open-source HF SSB transceiver have brought him a global reputation. The club presented the equipment to the student club earlier this month. The students are now QRV with a microBITX transciver, a power supply, an antenna and coax cable. Calling CQ from a school in their village in Telangana, the students are ready to take on the world.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Graham Kemp VK4BB.

(TELANGANA TODAY)

**
DEEP SPACE ATOMIC CLOCK ENDS MISSION

PAUL/ANCHOR: NASA has ended the mission of an experimental navigation aid that transmitted from deep space for two years. Kent Peterson KC0DGY brings us the details.

KENT: NASA has a message for its Deep Space Atomic Clock, the ultra-precise spacecraft-navigation aid that's been in test mode for two years: Your time—however precise it may have been—is up.
To its credit, the instrument outlived its original one-year test mission that began with its launch in June of 2019 on board General Atomics’ Orbital Test Bed spacecraft. On September 18th of this year, that journey came to an end when NASA turned the clock's power off. Its ambitious function was not without some high points: NASA credits it with breaking the record for stability among atomic clocks sent into space. Hosted on board a spacecraft, the clock had the same mission as its ground-based counterparts: keeping time measurements to aid in the calculations of a spacecraft's journey, factoring in that radio signals travel at the speed of light, 300 thousand kilometres per second. As spacecraft travel farther and farther from Earth, onboard atomic clocks such as this one are seen as preferable to the current ground-based instruments.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say the clock has one more mission to complete, however. Its data will be used in the development of Deep Space Atomic Clock-2 another tech demo. Clock-2 is to be onboard NASA's Venus mission set for 2028.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Kent Peterson KC0DGY.

(NASA)

**
FIRST MODERN MICROSATELLITE TURNS 40

PAUL/ANCHOR: Happy anniversary to UoSAT-1. Satellite enthusiasts recently marked the 40th anniversary of its launch into orbit, which took place on October 6th, 1981. Developed by a team based at the University of Surrey and led by Martin Sweeting G3YJO, it was the first modern microsatellite accessible to amateur radio operators.

The BBC carried an interview with the professor, who discussed the evolution of his largely homebrew project and its subsequent launch by NASA. See the text version of this week's Newsline script for a link to the BBC podcast.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v7pb ]

Meanwhile, three ham radio CubeSeats made by students from the Philippines and Australia were sent into orbit from the International Space Station on Wednesday. Australia's Binar-1 and the Philippines' Maya-3 and Maya-4 arrived at the ISS in August via a Cargo Dragon spacecraft. Details about their operating frequencies can be found on the AMSAT-UK website.

(AMSAT-UK)

**
ARISS CONNECTS DEAF UK STUDENTS TO ISS

PAUL/ANCHOR: Right on schedule, students at the Mary Hare School for the Deaf in the UK had their QSO with astronaut Mark Vande Hei KG5GNP aboard the International Space Station. To hear this first-of-a-kind ARISS contact follow the YouTube link in the text version of this newscast's script at arnewsline.org

[https://youtu.be/wmI3qKZgjJ4 ]

(YOUTUBE)
**
FRANCE CELEBRATES YOUNGEST REUNION ISLAND HAM

PAUL/ANCHOR: Amateur radio loves to celebrate its newest and youngest operators and in France, all eyes are on a certain proud 10-year-old. With more, here's Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

JEREMY: Congratulations to Florian Barret of Reunion Island who at age 10 has received the call sign FR4UG, making him the youngest radio amateur in France and its Overseas Territories. The announcement was made recently by the amateur radio club in Saint-Leu in Reunion Island, following Florian's training by Jacky FR4NP. France has only one class of amateur radio licence and the French HAREC exam contains 40 questions.

According to an article in the outremers360.com website, Florian was inspired to study to become a ham after watching his father get on the air using a Citizens Band radio.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

(OUTREMERS360.COM)

**
RSGB CONVENTION AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE

PAUL/ANCHOR: Although the 2021 Online Convention of the Radio Society of Great Britain is over, if you missed it you can watch the interviews and other parts of the program on the society's YouTube channel. Individual presentations are not yet available but much of the other content can be watched using the link that appears in the script for this week's newscast.

[www.youtube.com/theRSGB ]

**

BRAZIL, NORWAY JOIN POTA PROGRAM

PAUL/ANCHOR: Two new DXCC entities have joined Parks on the Air. Vance Martin N3VEM brings us that report.

VANCE: [actuality audio "CQ CQ POTA, CQ Parks on the Air”]
And now in Parks on the Air news: In September POTA welcomed Brazil and Norway to the program, which means we now have parks in 102 different DXCC entities. Activators in Brazil can now choose from over 700 different parks to activate, while activators in Norway, which is rich with nature reserves, have more than 2,500 parks to choose from. In POTA events, coming up on October 16th and 17th is the Autumn Support Your Parks Event. This is a great opportunity to get out for low-key weekend activity, and make some contacts before the weather turns cold, or for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, as seasons start to warm up.

In our last item of POTA news we’re excited to announce that September of 2021 was an all-time record-setting month for POTA with more than a quarter of a million contacts made in one month. Although logs are still coming in, the QSO count is currently 263,478.

This is November 3 Victor Echo Mike with your month ending September 2021 Parks on the Air update. Be sure to visit parksontheair.com for information about the program, and pota.app for spotting, park information, leader boards, and more.

(POTA)

**
WRTC COMPETITOR LIST RELEASED

PAUL/ANCHOR: The Italian WRTC 2023 organization has released the list of competitors for this four-yearly competition of the best contesters in ham radio "The Olympics of Amateur Radio." The event has been delayed by a year because of COVID-19. The list's URL can be found in the script of this week's newscast at arnewsline dot org.

**
ALEXANDERSON ALTERNATOR TO TRANSMIT ON UN DAY

PAUL/ANCHOR: The Alexanderson Association is once again marking United Nations Day - Sunday the 24th of October - by transmitting a global message in Morse Code on the historic Alexanderson alternator at the World Heritage Grimeton Radio Station in Sweden. This year's message was written by Parul Sharma, a Swedish human rights lawyer and a proponent for sustainability.

The CW message will be transmitted on 17.2 kHz. The transmitter uses the call sign SAQ. Test transmissions will be conducted on the 22nd of October between 1100 and 1400 UTC and listeners are invited to submit comments to info at alexander dot n dot se.

The event itself will be carried live on the association's YouTube channel.

(THE ALEXANDERSON ASSOCIATION)

**

IRELAND'S HAM EXAM MAY GET NEW OVERSEER

PAUL/ANCHOR: In Ireland, the regulator is seeking applicants to oversee the amateur radio exam there. Jeremy Boot G4NJH has the details.

JEREMY: Ireland's communications regulator, ComReg, is looking for organisations to oversee the country's amateur radio exams after the current agreement expires with the Irish Radio Transmitters Society on the 21st of December. The Harmonised Amateur Radio Certificate, or HAREC, is to be set, organised and corrected by whoever enters into the new agreement with the regulator afterward. ComReg is expected to publish its invitation to the tender process shortly on its website. The IRTS has been administering the 60-question HAREC exams on paper. There has been no option to take the exams online. A report on the Southgate Amateur Radio News website noted, however, that the Radio Society of Great Britain has been using a Dublin-based provider for its own online exams.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

(SOUTHGATE, COMREG)

**

AUSTRALIA BEGINS ALLOCATION OF 2x1 CONTEST CALLS

PAUL/ANCHOR: The allocation of the new 2x1 contest callsigns has begun in Australia. Be listening sometime soon for 2x1 calls with the prefixes VK, VJ and VL followed by the state number and the letters A through Zed. The applications for these callsigns started being accepted on the 13th of October by the Australian Maritime College on behalf of the Australian Communication and Media Authority.

They will cost 70 Australian Dollars and are limited to only contest use during a 12-month period after which all Advanced licence holders can apply for them, no reservation of the call for a further year will be allowed.

(ACMA)

**

WORLD OF DX

In the World of DX, be listening for members of the International Amateur Radio Contest DX Club who are using the call sign 4U2U until October 31st. They are celebrating United Nations Day, which is October 24th. This station counts as a contact with Austria, prefix OE, for DX purposes and it counts as 4U for the Vienna International Centre for the CQ DX Marathon Award. Send QSLs to UA3DX, direct or by the Bureau.

The CQ WW DX SSB contest taking place on October 30th and 31st offers the opportunity for a number of stations in Indonesia, Kuwait and Hawaii.

In Indonesia, a team using the callsign 7A2A will be operating from a contest station in central Java. QSL using LoTW or send QSLs direct or to YB2DX.

In Kuwait, Abdallah, 9K2GS, will be active in the contest as 9K2K. Send QSLs to EC6DX or QSL via LoTW.

Be listening for Alex, KU1CW, in Hawaii, using the callsign KH7Q from Oahu Island. He will also be active before and after the contest using the callsign KH6/KU1CW. QSL KH7Q via LoTW or direct to AH6NF.

(OHIO PENN DX)

**
KICKER: WI-FI? WHY NOT? A DIFFERENT KIND OF DX

PAUL/ANCHOR: For our final story we look at a most unusual kind of DX. It was accomplished recently using a mode that is usually associated with very local signals. Ed Durrant DD5LP tells us about it.

ED: It's hardly the preferred mode for DXing, but Wi-Fi certainly went the distance recently for two hams in Italy who succeeded in making contact between the island of Sardinia and the Tuscan summit of Monte Amita, 304 kilometres, or nearly 200 miles away.

The connection made across the Tyrrhenian (TUH-REEN-EE-YUN) Sea was a project undertaken by the Italian Center for Experimental Radio Activities and was reported recently on the Wi-FiPLanet website. The report didn't say who the hams were but the Italian center's spokesman Mirco Paesante (PIE-SANTAY) IZ3HAD called the achievement a world record for Wi-Fi and a first step in creating [quote] "a wide-band digital network to connect all Italian ham radio users to each other and to other services provided by our associations." [endquote] Those services include D-STAR, Echolink and Amateur TV.

The 802.11a link was created using radio modules on both ends from Ubiquity Networks based in San Jose, California. The modules were connected to 35dBi 5GHz parabolic dish antennas.

FRIDAY EDITION: The big fest is on in NH, get up there for an unbelievable experience. I will be in the hospital with my wife and will not be able to attend........After reading the report by Riley below I can say the program is doing nothing to straighten out the jamming and offensive operation on 75 and 20 meters that even a deaf person could find....The true story about Aunt Jemima....

Joe- K1JEK is all setup at Nearfest.....Thanks Kriss

September 2021 Volunteer Monitor Program Report

SolderSmoke podcast 233 available

Bill Meara M0HBR / N2CQR has released a new edition of the amateur radio SolderSmoke podcast

This edition includes:
• Travelogue: Cape Cod. SST. Marconi Site
• The World Friendship Society of Radio Amateurs
• Pete's Bench
• Bill's Bench
• Mailbag

Listen to the podcast
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke233.mp3

French special event

François, F8DVD, will activate the special event station TM60ANT between November 16-30th. Activity is to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Antarctic Treaty Signature (ATS).

Operation will be made by from François QTH in Mâcon (JN26JH), France. Activity will be on various HF bands between 40-10 meters.

The new reference for the WAP program is WAP-318.

QSL via F8DVD, direct (SAE + 2 USDs) or by the Bureau.

France was one of the 12 countries who signed the ATS in Washington on December 1, 1959. The treaty officially entered into force on June 23, 1961.

All info on this event is on:
http://www.qrz.com/db/TM60ANT

THURSDAY EDITION: I am helping a family sell some ham radio gear, I will post pictures. Many old boat anchor receivers and a few transmitters but they are in unbelievable condition, manual tuners in new condition, accessories, lots of old wooden case am radios, etc. .....BEST OFFER FOR GEAR BELOW BELOW...PICKUP ONLY IN ROCKPORT, MA

EMAIL: I'm sorry to share news of Bull Net member #92, KA1EPT, Dominick  "Nick" Menditto,  of Cary, Maine, recently pasted away. Although Nick wasn't on the air with us often, he'll be missed. His wife Virginia "Ginny". plans to remain in Cary Plantation, Maine.

Video of Mary Hare School students contacting Space Station

The Amateur Radio contact between students at the school, call sign GB4MHN, and astronaut Mark Vande Hei KG5GNP using the call sign NA1SS from onboard the International Space Station, takes place at about 46 mins into the video.

WEDNESDAY EDITION: Nearfest in NH opens up on Friday, camping overnight Thurday. Wait there is more- the weather is predicted to be sunny and 70 degrees! ...How George Washington dealt with a pandemic...

Email: Mister Mike, W1RC, has asked me to post the following:

Attention All Units! NEAR-Fest XXX is Next Weekend. We Are Back Live and
Online!

We are pleased to announce that NEAR-Fest XXX will begin at 0900 on
Friday October 15th, 2021. It will be a hybrid event – both live at
the Deerfield (NH) Fairgrounds and online worldwide via Zoom.

For more information follow these links:

General Information: https://near-fest.com/

NEAR-Fest Online: https://near-fest.com/hybrid- near-fest/

It has been a long two years.

73,

MisterMike, W1RC
Benevolent Dictator,

United Nations 4U1A DX club on-the-air

Members of the International Amateur Radio Contest DX Club (ARCDXC - United Nations, 4U1A) will be active as 4U2U between now and October 31st.

Activity is to celebrate United Nations Day (October 24th).

QSL via UA3DX, direct or by the Bureau.

ADDED NOTE: Remember this station counts for Austria (OE) for DXCC purposes and as 4U for the Vienna Inter-
national Centre for the CQ DX Marathon award.

Scouting's Jamboree-on-the-Air Takes Place this Weekend, October 15 -17

The Space Weather Woman The latest space weather forecast from Dr Tamitha Skov WX6SWW

ARDC Grant to Benefit High School Computer Science Students

TUESDAY EDITION: I am building a shorty 51 foot G5RV antenna for the local club sometime today but need to get over to the shop and use the band saw and cut out a center feed connector out of 1/4 inch Lexan polycarbonate plastic. I also need to cut out a whale image out of 3/4 maple for my wife, she wants a new cutting board. I did that on the CNC router last year and will try that again. I need to learn how to use the 3d software and could really make some cool stuff ....How you smart phone's low power mode really works...

Kindom of Eswatini

All of a sudden, Kindom of Eswatini (Swaziland) has become a popular spot for DXpeditions. Three operations are planned for October and one for November. Here are the upcoming operations:

3DA0RU -- Russian DXpedtion Team (RUDXT) will be active near Mbabane until October 22nd.
Operators are Nick/R5EC, Vasily/R7AL, Vladimir/R9LR, Vasily/RA1ZZ, Mike/RU3UR, Leo/RW9JZ, Slav/OK8AU and Wlodek/SP6EQZ. Activity will be on 160-6 meters using CW, SSB, FT8 and QO-100 satellite, with multiple stations.
Suggested FT8 frequencies: 1836, 3567, 5357, 7056, 10131, 14095, 18095, 21095, 24911 and 28095 kHz. QSL via R7AL (direct or by the Bureau), ClubLog's OQRS (preferable) or LoTW. For more details and updates, see their new Web page at: https://3da0.ru/en

3DA0WW -- Latvian RSF team will be active as 3DA0WW from eSwatini between October 12-26th.
Operators are Yuris/YL2GM, Jack/YL2KA, Wald/US7IGN, Sasha/UT7UV, Pavlo/UU0JR and Vlad/UW7RV.
Activity will be on 160-10 meters using CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8 (F/H).
For suggested frequencies, see: https://lral.lv/3da0ww/freq.html
QSL via YL2GN (direct) or ClubLog's OQRS (direct and by the Bureau). The log will be uploaded to LoTW six months after the end of the operation. For more details and updates, see: https://lral.lv/3da0ww/index.html

3DA0RR -- There have been reports that Roman Vega (aka Romeo Stepanenko, 3W3RR [also to name a "few" other callsigns -- 1S0RR, 1S0XV, 1S1RR, 4L/AH0M, 5A0RR, 9D0RR, R3A/3W3RR, UB5JRR, XE2/AH0M,
YA0RR and P5RS7]) is expected to be active as 3DA0RR between October 14-16th.
ADDED NOTE: Even if Romeo's 3DA0RR operation takes place, his operation will probably not count. He has been banned/disqualified from participation in the DXCC program (in any manner). This was activated by the ARRL Awards Committee after they reviewed all of the documentation for Romeo's 1992-93 P5RS7 North Korea operation. It was also announced in a ARRL DX Bulletin (#11) in 1996:
http://www.arrl.org/w1aw-bulletins-archive/ARLD011/1996

3DA0LP -- Lionel, ZS6DPL, is once again active as 3DA0LP from Manzini between October 11-15th and again between November 1-5th. Activity is limited due to work. He does operate on FT8. No other details are available

Amateur radio station, K6TZ, will offer visitors a glimpse of island life

California’s coastal islands are unique ecosystems that have a rich maritime history, and wireless communications has played a big role in this history for more than a century.

To help educate the public on these unique ecosystems, the Santa Cruz Island Foundation (SCIF) has invited the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club (SBARC) to build an amateur radio station at the new Chrisman California Islands Center (CCIC) in downtown Carpinteria, California.

The station will be prominently featured near the center’s main entrance. An interactive display will provide an overview of amateur radio communications and the role that amateur radio has played in the history of the islands.

When the station is not staffed with radio operators, center visitors can interact with the station using a custom touch screen. This screen controls an interactive presentation on amateur radio and wireless technologies and their importance to mariners, aviators, scientists and explorers who visit the rugged islands off the California coast. The presentation includes a demonstration of the station’s AIS (marine vessel), ADS-B (aircraft), emergency beacon (ELT/EPIRB), and amateur (APRS) tracking stations. Webcams connected to the station via SBARC’s club’s microwave data network will give visitors a real-time look at the island’s terrain. The presentation will also show how club members and researchers use the information and data collected.

Construction of the station was made possible by a $35,550 grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC). According to Levi Maaia, K6TZ trustee, the station is scheduled to open in 2022.

About SBARC
The Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club (SBARC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public benefit corporation whose mission is to promote education for persons interested in telecommunications, to disseminate information about scientific discoveries and progress in the field, and to train communicators for public service and emergency communications. SBARC also encourages and sponsors experiments in electronics and promotes the highest standards of practice and ethics in the conduct of communications. Learn more about SBARC at https://www.sbarc.org.

About ARDC
Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a California-based foundation with roots in amateur radio and the technology of internet communication. The organization got its start by managing allocations of the AMPRnet address space, which is designated to licensed amateur radio operators worldwide. Additionally, ARDC makes grants to projects and organizations that follow amateur radio’s practice and tradition of technical experimentation in both amateur radio and digital communication science. Such experimentation has led to broad advances for the benefit of the general public – such as the mobile phone and wireless internet technology. ARDC envisions a world where all such technology is available through open source hardware and software, and where anyone has the ability to innovate upon it.

DXCC Country/Entity Report

According to the Amateur Radio Cluster Network for the week of Sunday, 3rd October, through Sunday, 10th October there were 216 countries active.

Countries available:

3A, 3B8, 3B9, 3D2, 3DA, 3W, 4J, 4L, 4O, 4S, 4U1U, 4X, 5A, 5B, 5H, 5N, 5R, 5T, 5V, 5W, 5X, 5Z, 6Y, 7Q, 7X, 8P, 8Q, 9A, 9G, 9H, 9J, 9K, 9M2, 9M6, 9Q, 9V, 9X, 9Y,

A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A9, AP, BV, BY, C3, C6, C9, CE, CE0Y, CE9, CM, CN, CP, CT, CT3, CU, CX, D2, D6, DL, DU, E5/s, E7, EA, EA6, EA8, EA9, EI, EK, EL, EP, ER, ES, EU, EX, EY, F, FG, FK, FM, FO, FR, FS, FY, G, GD, GI, GJ, GM, GU, GW, HA, HB, HB0, HC, HH, HI, HK, HL, HP, HR, HS, HV, HZ, I, IS, J3, J5, J6, J7, J8, JA, JD/o, JT, JW, JY,

K, KG4, KH0, KH2, KH6, KL, KP2, KP4, LA, LU, LX, LY, LZ, OA, OD, OE, OH, OH0, OJ0, OK, OM, ON, OX, OY, OZ, P4, PA, PJ2, PJ4, PJ5, PJ7, PY, PY0F, PZ, S0, S2, S5, S7, S9, SM, SP, ST, SU, SV, SV5, SV9, T5, T7, TA, TF, TG, TI, TK, TN, TR, TZ,

UA, UA2, UA9, UK, UN, UR, V3, V4, V5, V7, V8, VE, VK, VP2E, VP6, VP8, VP9, VR, VU, XE, XW, YB, YI, YK, YL, YN, YO, YS, YU, YV, Z2, Z3, Z6, ZA, ZB, ZC4, ZD7, ZF, ZL, ZP, ZS

COLUMBUS DAY EDITION: The radio on my truck malfunctioned. The cd disc player will not turn off nor accept a cd, but I just happen to have  anew radio in the basement. A few years ago the radio seemed to develop a lighting problem an was very dim in the daylight so I bought a new radio. As it turned out I did not replace it because I found I had so  much crap on the dash I was covering a sensor that controls the dimming function regarding lighting in the day or night. So, I got on Youtube and found the video I needed and I went to work...15 minutes and the new radio was in and working great...What it’s like to drink water that’s 15,000 years old, probably better than Carling's beer....The FCC wants to crack down on SIM swapping, a common form of identity theft. Companies have failed to fix the pernicious problem, so the government is stepping in. ...Lots of hams working the Boston Marathon today, good luck to runners and those assisting..

59 Chevy car and matching boat....

WEEKEND EDITION: Bio-Bricks in the basement, now I just wait for the leaves and we are tucked in for the winter....Bands are open, I have been working on my cw on 15-20 meters for a change. Even if I am doing stuff in the shack, I leave the cw on and copy in my head (mostly) and it brings the skill back, like riding a bicycle....My buddy stopped by the other day with his new Ford hybrid pickup with a built in 7200 watt generator, its the nuts.....I remind you this coming Friday is Near-Fest, the best hamfest in New England...

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Standard Information Exchange in Amateur Radio

The art of storing information in such a way that it doesn't devolve into random gibberish is an ongoing battle in the evolution of the human race. Egyptians five thousand years ago were perfectly happy storing information using hieroglyphs. They used it for well over three thousand years, but today you'd be hard pressed bumping into anyone on the street who knows one, let alone one thousand characters.

Latin fared a little better. It's been in use for over two thousand years, but other than fields like biology, medicine and of course some religions, the best you can hope for is et cetera, mea culpa and my favourite, carpe noctum, that and a few mottos scattered about.

Using technology to store information is no better. If you have a 3.5 inch floppy disc tucked away in a drawer, can you still read it today and do you know why it's called a floppy disc? What about a 5.25 inch, or 8 inch floppy. What about tape. Do you still have backups stored on DAT?

Even if you could physically read the information, could you still make sense of it? Can you open a VisiCalc spreadsheet file today? That was invented during my lifetime, first released in 1979. The latest release was in 1983.

My point being that storing and retrieving information is hard.

Amateur Radio is an activity that has been around since the early 1900's, over a century of information. We describe our collective wisdom in books, magazines, audio recordings, websites, podcasts, videos and tweets.

One of the more consistent sources of information coming from our activity is logging, specifically QSO or contact logging. There are bookshelves full of paper log files, but since the advent of home computing, logging now is primarily an electronic affair.

If you've upgraded the software on your computer, you know the pains associated with maintaining your log across those transitions. If you've changed operating systems, the problem only got worse.

Currently there are primarily two standards associated with logging, the ADIF and Cabrillo specifications. Both are published ways of describing how to store information in such a way that various bits of software can read the information and arrive at the same interpretation.

As you might expect, things change over time and any standard needs to be able to adopt changes as they occur. How that happens is less than transparent and in an open community like amateur radio, that's a problem.

Used primarily for logging contacts, the Amateur Data Interchange Format or ADIF is published on a website, adif.org. There's lively discussion in a mailing list and since its inception in 1996, it's evolved through many versions, incorporating change as it happens. Like the adoption of new digital modes, new country codes and administrative subdivisions.

Used for contest logging, Cabrillo is published on the World Wide Radio Operators Foundation, or WWROF web site which assumed administration for the specification in 2014. It documents changes as they occurred, like adding contest names, station types and contest overlays. While there's clearly activity happening, there doesn't appear to be a public forum where this is discussed.

Speaking of public.

The DXCC, or DX Century Club is a radio award for working countries on a list. ADIF stores those country codes using the DXCC country code number, which is part of the specification published by the ARRL, the American Radio Relay League. The list of DXCC entities is copyrighted by the ARRL, which is fair enough, but you have to actually buy it from the ARRL to get a copy. This is a problem because it means that any future archivist, you included, needs access to a specific version of both the ADIF and the then valid DXCC list, just to read the information in a log file. To put it mildly, in my opinion, that's bonkers.

Relying on external information isn't limited to ADIF. Cabrillo relies on external data for the format of the Location field which indicates where the station was operating from. Among others, it refers to the RSGB, the Radio Society of Great Britain who maintains a list of IOTA, or Islands on the Air, published on a web site that no longer exists.

There are other issues.

It appears that for the Cabrillo specification there is no incremental version number associated with any changes. Version 3 of Cabrillo was released in 2006. There are 31 changes published to update Version 3, but as far as I can tell, they're all called Version 3, so anyone attempting to read a Version 3 log will not actually know what they're dealing with. To give you a specific example of three changes. In 2016 the 119G band name was changed to 123G, which was changed in 2021 to 122G. All three labels refer to the same band, but until you actually start looking at the file will you have any indication about the version used to generate the file.

Let's move on.

Contesting. Not the logging or the on-air activity, but how to score a contest. What activity gets points and what incurs a penalty? Do you get different points for different bands, for different station prefixes, for low power, for multiple operators, for being portable and plenty more. Can you make contact with the same station more than once, if so, how often and under which circumstances? What is the exchange, how does it change, if at all? Each of these choices are weighed by contest managers all over the globe and they do it every time they run their contest. For some contests that means that there are dozens of rule versions across the years. To give you some idea of scale, the modern CQWW was first run in 1948 and there's at least one amateur contest every weekend.

Now imagine that you're writing contest logging software that keeps track of your score and alerts you if the contact you're about to make is valid or not, or if it incurs a penalty if you were to log it. That software is driven by the rules that govern a particular contest.

Some contest software is updated by the author every time a major contest is held to incorporate the latest changes. Other contest tools use external definition files, which specify how a particular contest is scored.

As you might suspect, that too is information and it too is in flux and to make matters worse, there is no standard. So far, the tools that I've found that make any concerted attempt at this all use different file formats to specify how a contest is scored and of those, one explicitly points out that their file format doesn't incorporate all of the possible variation, leaving it to updating the software itself in order to incorporate changes that aren't covered by their own file format. That is sub-optimal to say the least.

Personally, I think that there is a place for a global standards body for amateur radio, one that coordinates all these efforts, one that has a lively discussion, one that uses modern tools to publish its specifications and one that does this using public information with an eye on record keeping.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

BBC TV archive clip of 1949 ham radio contact

On October 6, 2021, the BBC Archive shared a clip of a news item about a radio amateur's reception of BBC TV pictures in Cape Town, South Africa in 1949, it includes an on-air contact

The BBC news item describes the remarkable reception of BBC television pictures from Alexandra Palace, London on 45 MHz by Henry Rieder ZS1P in Cape Town, South Africa.  
The clip features a contact between Mr C. G. Allen G8IG of Bromley, Kent and Henry ZS1P in which G8IG asks Henry questions about the TV reception.

See the BBC Archive Tweet and video at
https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1445803539431841792

This SARL PDF mentions that reading about Henry ZS1P's achievement in the magazine Radio ZS inspired Mike Bosch ZS2FM to receive the BBC TV transmissions in 1956. There is a brief description of the equipment used, see
http://www.sarl.org.za/members/HallofFame/PDF/ARHOF%20Mike%
20Bosch%20ZS2FM.pdf

Amateur Radio Newsline Report

NEW CALLSIGN PREFIX SETTLES FALKLANDS ISLAND DILEMMA

JIM/ANCHOR: We begin this week with report of a development that spells good news for DXpeditioners and chasers: At long last a new callsign prefix has evolved out of a long-simmering issue over licensed operations in the former Falkland Islands Dependencies. Jim Meachen ZL2BHF brings us that report.

JIM: Ofcom, the communications regulator in the UK, has agreed to use of a new prefix for the former Falkland Islands Dependencies, which had been mistakenly omitted from the Falkland Islands Communications Ordinance in 2017. The prefix Victor Papa Zero, VP0, has been assigned to these territories and the Falkland Islands Communications Regulator, which was part of the discussions with Ofcom, is to administer these licenses on behalf of the governments of the British Antarctic Territory and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. The prefix will also apply to the British sector of the Antarctic mainland, including the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands as well as the South Orkney and South Shetland Islands. This brings welcome news to DXpeditioners and others who have been unable to use VP8 licenses in these former dependencies for years. The new call signs will only be issued with three-letter suffixes.

Hams assigned VP8 call signs under the old Falkland Islands Communications Ordinance will remain valid until the licenses require revalidation. At that time, they will be reassigned a VP0 call sign.

Hams may coment on the draft of this policy until the 18th of October, Falklands Island Time. Follow the link that appears in the script for this week's newscast at arnewsline.org.

[FOR PRINT, DO NOT READ: www.gov.gs/amateur-radio-licences-policy-consultation/]

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jim Meachen ZL2BHF.

(OHIO PENN DX, SOUTHGATE)

**
WEST BENGAL HAMS ASSIST MOTHERS OF NEWBORNS

JIM/ANCHOR: In India, West Bengal hams turned their efforts recently to aiding two displaced mothers of newborn babies. John Williams VK4JJW has more.

JOHN: Relying on their amateur radio skills and the vast network of connections that enables members to reconnect missing persons with their families, members of India's West Bengal Radio Club came to the asssistance of two women shortly after they had given birth.

According to a report in the Sujanya News, a woman who was in the advanced stages of pregnancy was taken to Diamond Harbour Super Specialty Hospital in West Bengal by police who found her at the local railway station and noticed she appeared to be mentally challenged. The child was born on September 10th and according to the news account her family was located in Punjab after police requested intervention by the amateur radio club. Ambarish Nag Biswas, secretary of the club, said the connection was made with the help of Satnam Singh Birdi, VU2COR, in Punjab state. According to the newspaper story the woman's brother told the hams she had been missing for more than two months and that her husband also appeared to be suffering from mental illness. The brother made the trip to the hospital, accompanied by other relatives, to retrieve the woman and her newborn baby.

In another more challenging case, however, the fate of another mother and her newborn child at that same hospital is less certain. The West Bengal hams learned that the woman, who also appeared to be mentally challenged, is a widow and the mother of two older children who are now being cared for by neighbours. Ambarish Nag Biswas told the newspaper that no one has stepped forward to bring the woman home, claiming her pregnancy was the result of sexual assault and a stigma to her family.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm John Williams VK4JJW.

(SUJANYA NEWS, WEST BENGAL RADIO CLUB)

**
SILENT KEY: ACTIVE NET PARTICIPANT WALTER PAGE PYNE, WA3EOP

JIM/ANCHOR: A prominent active amateur radio operator and a well-known voice on the OMISS and Century Club nets has become a Silent Key. Sel Embee KB3TZD tells us about him.

SEL: Walter Page Pyne was known for identifying his callsign as WA3EOP - We Are Three Elephants On Patrol - and his voice was a familiar one on the OMISS Net, the Century Club Net, the YL International Single Sideband Net and numerous other nets. Page, as he was known to friends, died on September 26th in his Maryland hometown of Hagerstown. A life member of the Antietam (Ann-Tee-Tum) Radio Association and the International Order of Odd Fellows ham club, he was also a cofounder of the Cheese Hollow Amateur Radio Society in Maryland. He had served as Charter Year President of the Hiram Percy Maxim Memorial Chapter (#222) of the Quarter Century Wireless Association. Page, a former phone activities manager for the ARRL's Maryland/DC section, at the time of his death belonged to the Maryland Emergency Phone Net.

Walter Page Pyne was 74.

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Sel Embee KB3TZD.

(QRZ.COM, TRIBUTE ARCHIVE)

**
SCHOOL FOR DEAF PREPS FOR UNIQUE ARISS CONTACT

JIM/ANCHOR: Few things are outside the realm of possibility with amateur radio, as a group of deaf students in the UK is about to learn in an ARISS QSO with an American astronaut. Here's Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

JEREMY: American astronaut Mark Vande Hei, KG5GNP, is scheduled to complete a unique amateur radio contact from the ISS with students at Mary Hare School for deaf children in Berkshire, England.

Ciaran Morgan, M0XTD, the UK's ARISS operations lead, told Newsline that the event will proceed like a standard ARISS contact for the astronaut, but students and school volunteers will have access to a stenographer using a device that projects what is being said onto a large screen in their auditorium. Ciaran added that the text will also appear on a live web stream which will also feature a sign language interpreter. Meanwhile, hams from the Newbury and District Amateur Radio Society have been assisting the students by providing lessons on amateur radio.

The school noted on its blog: [quote] "These will be the first deaf children to have done this, making it a world first." [endquote]

While some of the students will be linked to the action by a web feed, others will be in the auditorium itself as socially distanced spectators. It is scheduled to take place sometime during the week of October 10th.

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

(CIARAN MORGAN, M0XTD, ARISS-UK, MARY HARE SCHOOL)

**
CQWW DX CONTEST GAINS PLAQUE SPONSORS FOR YOUTH

JIM/ANCHOR: As the date inches forward for the CQ WorldWide DX contest, there are new sponsors for categories featuring young competitors. Ed Durrant DD5LP has those details.

ED: The IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group will be sponsoring plaques awarded in the upcoming CQWW DX contest for competitors in Europe and Africa who are 25 years of age or younger. Plaques will be given to young SSB and CW operators. A number of other YOTA branches and IARU Youth Working Groups are sponsoring other awards on other continents for young participants. The CQWW contest announced on its blog in August that organisers have created a number of overlays within the contest, including those for young operators and for hams who are experimenting with new technologies. A new Explorer category has been created for those radio operators who are using SSB and CW while employing such new technologies as internet-linked stations.

The contest dates are October 30th and 31st for SSB and November 27th and 28th for CW.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Ed Durrant DD5LP.

(CQWW BLOG)
**
IT'S 'FALLOUT' WEEKEND FOR 100 WATTS AND A WIRE

JIM/ANCHOR: Don't forget to be listening for operators calling "CQ FALL OUT!" on October 8th, 9th and 10th. Those are the days for the portable operating event of the 100 Watts and a Wire community. Operators are being encouraged to work any band, any mode and alone or as a team. The exchange is your call sign, your 100Watts ID if you have one, your state, province or DX country and a true signal report.

For details visit the website 100wattsandawire.com and use the numerals "1 Zero Zero" for the word "one hundred."

(100 WATTS AND A WIRE)

**
BREAK HERE: Time for you to identify your station. We are the Amateur Radio Newsline, heard on bulletin stations around the world, including the K7MMA repeater in Spokane, Washington on Fridays at 5 p.m. local time.

**
APPALACHIAN TRAIL ACTIVATIONS LIGHT UP AIRWAVES

JIM/ANCHOR: When POTA, SOTA and Worldwide Flora and Fauna operators activated sites along the Appalachian Trail in the eastern United States recently, the airwaves above apparently blazed a few trails of their own. Dave Parks WB8ODF brings us that report.

DAVE: Saturday, October 2nd was a busy day for Appalachian Trail activations, as more than 60 stations called CQ from points along more than two thousand miles of trail. David, ND1J, and Mike KB7THL operated POTA stations in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, respectively, and Jonathan, W4UYE, and Bob, AC1Z, activated SOTA summits in Georgia and Virginia, respectively. According to organizer Mike WB2FUV, the day ended with at least 25 unique SOTA summits activated and at least 26 POTA partipants in 11 of the 14 states. Mike himself was operating QRP CW on West Mountain along the original section of the trail and logged 77 contacts. He said many SOTA stations were also making summit-to-summit contacts with W7A SOTA stations on the 10 point peaks in Arizona.

The event marked the trail's 100th anniversary. But the celebration extended beyond the US: Preliminary results on the event website showed that the farthest DX went to Heinz, OE5EEP/p in the Austrian mountains. He broke through the stateside pileups to work two SOTA stations on the trail.

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Dave Parks WB8ODF.

(MICHAEL MORAN WB2FUV)

**
RESULTS ARE IN FOR PORTABLE OPERATIONS CHALLENGE

JIM/ANCHOR: The results are in for the Portable Operations Challenge held in Sepember. Here's Ed Durrant DD5LP.

ED: The Portable Operations Challenge 2021 took place on September 4th and 5th and the overall winner showed what can be done from a great portable location and using very low power. With just six contacts and running at one-watt CW on twenty metres, Jack Haefner NG2E took out the top spot with a grand total of 615,924 points. His six contacts were from all around the US plus one that went all the way from his Hogback Mountain SOTA summit W4V/SH-007 in Virginia to French SOTA chaser Christian F4WBN near the French/Spanish border. All contacts took place within 32 minutes of operating, in session two of the contest.

The most efficient contact measured in kilometres per watt used was that same Virginia - France contact with 6,340 kilometres per watt achieved.

So, this year both the overall winner and the furthest km/watt contact title go to one person - Jack Haefner NG2E. WELL DONE Jack!

The number of entrants was a little disappointing. There were only eighteen, far more had been hoped for in this, the second year, of the challenge.

Of those entering however, there were a wide variety of power levels and modes both from home and portable locations.

Of the eighteen entrants, fifteen were from the US, two from Europe and one from Australia.

For the portable operations challenge and ARNewsline this has been Ed DD5LP.

**
CHINA ANNOUNCES LOSS OF SATELLITE

JIM/ANCHOR: China had great hopes for a satellite launched late last month but following a malfunction, has declared it lost. Jason Daniels VK2LAW has that story.

JASON: China's Shiyan-10 satellite was declared lost shortly after its launch on Monday, September 27th. In releasing the news, Chinese state media reported that the spacecraft did not function properly despite having had a normal flight one day earlier. A report on Twitter said a flash was seen in the sky above New South Wales, Australia. According to SpaceNews, the flash was believed to be a sign that the launch was on course and that this was a visible burn of the upper stage of the Long March 3B rocket that carried the satellite as payload. The satellite was to have entered a geosynchronous orbit around Earth. It was said to have malfunctioned during the launch and by Tuesday, September 28th, was officially declared a failure.

Shiyan-10's launch closely followed the liftoff of China's Jilin-1 Gaefen 02D satellite, which was reported to have achieved successful orbit.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jason Daniels VK2LAW.

(SPACE.COM, SPACENEWS)

**
IN-PERSON EXAMS RETURNING IN UK

JIM/ANCHOR: In the UK, it's almost back to business as usual for amateur radio exams but there are a few changes in the works. Jeremy Boot G4NJH explains.

JEREMY: Face-to-face amateur radio exams are making a comeback now that pandemic restrictions are easing after 18 months. Exams via remote invigilation and training by distance-learning sessions are giving way to in-person club meetings and training for those who choose it. The Radio Society of Great Britain has announced that starting on the 1st November, clubs will be able to use a new online booking system for candidates' paper-based exams. The same booking system is already in use for online exams as of the 6th of October. There are plans, however, to phase out the paper exams eventually.

Meanwhile, candidates planning to take the Foundation exam, going forward, will no longer be required to complete a practical test, according to the RSGB Examination Standards Committee. The tests had in any case been suspended during the 18-month pandemic restriction period, but clubs are still encouraged to include a practical component in their candidate training.

For Amateur Radio Newsline I'm Jeremy Boot G4NJH.

(RSGB)

**

WORLD OF DX

In the world of DX, be listening for Nobby, G0VJG, operating as 3B8/G0VJG from Mauritius until the 16th of October. He's on 80 through 10 metres using SSB and the Digital modes. Request QSLs via M0OXO's OQRS or send directly to him.

(OHIO PENN DX)

**
KICKER: HAM RADIO FILM SHORT, 'NIGHT,' COMES TO LIGHT

JIM/ANCHOR: Our final story takes us to the movies—namely to the screening of a short film featuring student actors....and amateur radio! Mike Askins KE5CXP wraps it up for us this week.

MIKE: In 34 harrowing minutes, a world awakens darkened by a sudden and unexplained absence of morning sun. Amateur radio provides a lifeline for a group of terrified children who've disovered they've been plunged into an endless state of midnight. This is the plot of the film short, "Night," which premiered recently on YouTube following its release by John D'Aquino's Young Actors Workshop, a California-based drama school. The workshop had reached out to the Edmond Amateur Radio Society K5EOK for technical assistance to prepare for the filming in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The young actors may all be relative unknowns for now but hams in Oklahoma and beyond might recognize two of the names in the credits: Marcus Sutliffe, N5ZY, and Kevin O'Dell N0IRW. Marcus gets special thanks for making the connections with the club and Kevin is credited as technical advisor. Kevin, who has an extensive film and video production background, is also featured in a key speaking role as The Colonel, the radio operator the youngsters reach out to for guidance. The Colonel tells them that a nuclear blast has occurred, putting a shroud of darkness between the Earth and the sun.

Written and directed by John D'Aquino, the film is a showcase for the young student actors and was created with assistance from the Oklahoma Film and Music Office. But even within its plotline of darkness and destruction, amateur radio emerges as a shining light and a ray of hope for making meaningful connections in troubled times.

Sisters earn ham radio licenses

The Midland Daily News reports on two sisters who got their amateur radio licenses - Kanushi Desai KE8RNA and Jashvi Desai KE8QHI

The newspaper says:

Two years ago, Kanushi Desai, always an inquisitive youngster, decided to join the Jefferson Middle School Electronics Club. The then sixth grader took an immediate liking to the activity.

“Kanushi was so young, she had no idea of any of these things,” said Pranali Desai, Kanushi’s mother. “Even when she was little, she was always exploring, always doing something.”

The first thing she built in the club was a flashlight, and the megawatt smile that lit up Kanushi’s face following this success is something her mother won’t soon forget.

“The happiness on her face when she saw all these elements come together told me, as a parent, that we should continue to support this new interest,” said Pranali Desai. “She started learning more and more and soon got her older sister, Jashvi, interested. She started learning from Kanushi.”

Today the pair of sisters are proud owners of amateur radio licenses after passing both the FCC Technician Class and General Class Amateur Radio exams.

Read the full story at
https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Midland-sisters-earn-amateur-radio-licenses-16508738.php

TUESDAY EDITION: Pick of the week for easy listening goes to 3941, a mellow group of New England hams. Thumbs up to Cal- W1HHO, Pete-K1MPM, Russell- WA1JFX, and Mike- N1XW ( I added you to the bottom of the page, got a photo you can send me to go with your name?).....Facebook went down yesterday and imagine the horror incurred on millions of brain dead followers.....An investment of $100 million in directed-energy weapons includes two new anti-drone lasers, one of which will be mounted on a frigate. ...3844 was a hotspot and being monitored by the FCC, no activity the last few nights. I wonder if they got slapped?...Graphene: 'Miracle material' singled out for COVID conspiracies ....Singer Justin Bieber Announces Limited-Edition 'Peaches' Cannabis Line , you have to be be shitting me?

Data on Number of Radio Amateurs Worldwide Needs Updating

Facebook is down, and the internet is freaking out. Just before noon Eastern time on Monday, users started reporting error messages when they tried to access Facebook or the apps it owns like WhatsApp and Instagram, according to the New York Times. The Facebook owned virtual reality platform, Oculus, is also affected. Downdetector, which monitors real-time web activity and traffic across sites, has documented and tracked outage reports; it has posted a red banner on its homepage saying that reports indicate there may be a widespread outage at Facebook, which may be impacting your service.

Around roughly 1pm, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp tweeted out that they were aware that users were experiencing problems accessing the apps, and that they were quickly working to troubleshoot. 

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's CTO, followed by writing on his Twitter account that Facebook was 'experiencing networking issues, and that 'teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible.'

Two Facebook security team members told the Times that it was unlikely that a cyberattack caused the issues because the technology behind the apps was still different enough that one hack was not likely to affect all of them at once.

Several Twitter users, including John Graham-Cumming, the chief technology officer of web infrastructure company Cloudflare, and Chad Loder, the CEO of cybersecurity training startup Habitu8, wrote that the problem was probably with Facebook's Domain Name System (DNS) servers. 

According to Cloudflare, which services some of Facebook’s internet infrastructure, DNS servers are like the phonebooks of the internet. They convert websites like facebook.com into internal protocol, or IP, addresses that direct users to the site. When the server connection is disrupted, the computer is unable to connect the domain name (facebook.com) with its corresponding IP address, and therefore it no longer understands where the user wants to go. It’s like removing someone's phone number under their name in the address book, or as cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont writes on Twitter, when DNS falls apart, “nobody can find you on the internet.” Our sibling website Futurism reports that it’s like Facebook de-platformed itself.

Additionally, the Times found that chaos had erupted internally at the Facebook offices. Reportedly, the company’s internal communications systems have stopped working, and employees were unable to make calls with company cell phones, or receive outside emails. Select Facebook employees told the Times that they had trouble swiping into office buildings and conference rooms because their digital badges were glitching. This issue has barred security engineers from going into server rooms to examine the outage. The Verge reported that Facebook had dispatched engineers to one of its main US data centers in California to work out the problem because it could not solve it remotely. Internet infrastructure experts that Wired spoke with suggested that inside Facebook, one of its routers must’ve somehow encountered an error that caused it to disconnect from the rest of the internet.

Although its not uncommon for apps to experience temporary outages, the duration and scale of this event at Facebook is alarming; its still unclear when servers will come online again. 

Several Twitter users have pointed out that the timing of the outage is interesting. Last night, data scientist Frances Haugen told CBS 60 Minutes that the company prioritized profit over public good. And today, Reuters reported that Facebook is asking again for the dismissal of an antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which is pushing the company to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.